An essay written originlly for my Quaker Area Meeting newsletter, and adapted for my monthly column in my local newspaper, The Bristol Post. It is based on what we heard and witnessed at the recent Quaker Yearly Meeting.
Our Privilege and Power.
None of us is aware of all our privileges. We regard many of them as normal and unexceptional. When did we last go really hungry? Have we had to get supplies from a food bank? Have we ever been stopped and searched? Are there plenty of books in our house? Must we book special facilities before we can take a train journey?
As we exercise our privileges we unwittingly use the power they give us to degrade further the life of the unprivileged, or to ravage the Earth.
Unrealised privilege and unwitting power over our less privileged compatriots occurs here in Britain, especially due to our class structure and our racism, sexism, ageism, etc. etc. but even worse is the way we as a country use our national power to exploit and degrade the world. We produce most of the pollution which causes climate change; poorer countries which produce little pollution suffer the most.
We are inclined to feel complacent about the measures we have taken, and to dismiss environmentalists’ exhortations as unrealistic. Is it enough to pay our taxes and to give a bit to poor and homeless people? Is it enough to point out that others give much less?
Each or us is somewhere along a scale which stretches from extreme profligacy to amazing sustainability. Rather than relax into complacency, or to give up as impossible the demands that we greatly change our life-style, a suggestion is that we might take regular, comparatively small steps in the right direction. So for example one could aim to make some small effort every week, and some major change less often. Ensuring one’s electricity was all from sustainable sources would be a fairly easy first step. If giving up one’s car was too much to consider, maybe downsizing to a small electric car might be a solution. Also we might offer lifts to others who do not have the privilege of their own transport. And we might vote for a Party which promises to subsidise buses more, aware that this might entail higher taxes. If one already has no car one would think of some other way one could alleviate the effects of other privileges. Like not flying. Or maybe to cut one’s overseas holidays to only one a year.
Adopting a more sustainable life style is easy compared with recognising and dealing with social privileges of which we are currently unaware, and then responding adequately. It is not sufficient to not discriminate against people less privileged than oneself. One must recognise and seek to alleviate the suffering they have experienced. We need not, perhaps cannot cast off our privilege, but we can try to alleviate its ill-effects.
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